Highlights from the 9th Asian Crop Science Association Conference, June 5-7, Jeju, Korea

Written by: Young Koung Lee

The 9th Asian Crop Science Association Conference (9th ACSAC) was held at Jeju International Convention Center, Korea on June 5-7, 2017.  Dr. Young Koung Lee presented a poster about the Gramene comparative genomics and pathways database. The meeting brought together crop researchers from all over the world, especially Asia, Japan, Korea, and China.

Gramene at the 9th ACSAC mainly focused on the issues below:

• 44 plant reference assemblies. Additions within the past year include Beta vulgaris (sugar beet), Trifolium pratense (red clover), Brassica napus (oilseed rape), Galdieria sulphuraria (extremophilic red algae), and Chondrus crispus (Irish moss). Updated assemblies include Zea mays  B73 [RefGenV4], Triticum aestivum [TGACv1], Oryza longistaminata [v1.0], and Sorghum bicolor [v2.0].
• Updated gene annotations (including GO and InterPro domains), peptide Compara genomics & putative split genes for all species.
• New AraPort11 gene annotations for Arabidopsis thaliana.
• New EMS-induced genetic variants: ~1.8 M in sorghum (Jiao et al, 2016) and ~7.4 M in wheat (Ksenia et al, 2016).
• Track hubs for over 900 public RNA-seq studies.
• Embedded baseline gene expression profiles from Atlas.
• Updated Ensembl software v88 & BioMarts.